1 hour ago China’s Birth Rate Hits Record Low, Intensifying Demographic Concerns

A Quieting Nursery: China’s Demographic Crossroads On a gray morning in a Beijing neighborhood where the scooters have grown fewer and the playground shrinks with the seasons, a toddler’s laughter breaks the silence like an unexpected chord. Yet such sounds are becoming rarer across China—so rare, in fact, that official figures released this year read […]

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38 h. ago Inside Poland’s New Safety Guide: Essential Rules, Tips and Precautions

When the Postman Delivers a Survival Manual: Poland’s New Safety Guide and the Everyday Politics of Preparedness It arrived in the mailbox like a neighborly leaflet—thicker, heavier, and far more charged than any supermarket flyer. Seventeen million copies, the government says. Forty-eight pages of instructions, maps and blank spaces for family plans. A government reaching […]

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5 d. ago Nestlé apologizes after infant formula recall sparks parental safety concerns

When Trust Goes Flat: How a Global Infant-Formula Recall Became a Lesson in Fragile Supply Chains There are few things as intimate and immediate as the click of a mother’s spoon against the plastic rim of an infant formula tub at 3 a.m. It’s a ritual wrapped in routine and worry—an act of care that […]

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7 d. ago UK regulator Ofcom opens probe into X over Grok safety concerns

When an AI “Grok” Turns Ugly: How a New Tool Became a Global Test of Tech Responsibility There’s a very modern kind of shock: the one that arrives not with a siren or a headline, but with an image sliding silently across a phone screen—someone you know, altered into something obscene. In early January, that […]

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9 d. ago Australia declares national disaster as devastating bushfires rage nationwide

When the Sky Turned Copper: Fires, Heat and the New Normal in Victoria The horizon above Longwood looked like a painting scorched at the edges — a low, seething rim of smoke blotting out the late-afternoon sun and turning the whole world the color of old copper. Embers skittered across paddocks, tumbling like angry sparks […]

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1 week ago Rob Reiner’s son to face arraignment in parents’ murder case

A Quiet Street, A Loud Shock: The Reiner Tragedy Unfolds On a crisp December morning in Brentwood, where palms sway above manicured hedges and holiday wreaths cling to ornate doors, the ordinary rhythm of an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood was ruptured by something that felt utterly impossible: the death of two people who had been […]

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2 w. ago North Korean leader’s daughter seen visiting state mausoleum

At the Mausoleum: A Quiet Photograph and a Loud Question There are images that speak in a dozen languages at once, and then there are images that aim for silence. North Korea’s state news agency released a few such photographs recently—glossy, staged, and instantly thorny—showing a young girl flanked by her parents in the cavernous, […]

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2 w. ago National Guard Pulled Back from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland

When the Convoys Left: Cities Exhale, Washington Recalibrates On an ordinary morning in late December, semi-quiet streets in three American cities snapped back into a quieter kind of normal. Armored Humvees and gray National Guard trucks — symbols that had dominated sidewalks and public squares for months — were being loaded, engines idling, then turned […]

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